Fire and Bones by Kathy Reichs

Sarah Harrison: Welcome to Tea Tonic & Toxin, a book club and podcast for anyone who wants to explore the best mysteries and thrillers ever written. I’m your host, Sarah Harrison.

Carolyn Daughters: And I’m your host Carolyn Daughters. Pour yourself a cup of tea, a gin and tonic …

Sarah Harrison: … but not a toxin …

Carolyn Daughters: And join us on a journey through 19th and 20th century mysteries and thrillers, every one of them a game changer.

OUR SPONSOR
Our sponsor is Grace Sigma, a boutique process engineering consultancy run by our own Sarah Harrison. Grace Sigma works nationally in such industries as finance, telecom and government. Grace Sigma uses lean methods to assist in data, dashboarding, storytelling, training, process visualization and project management, whether you’re a small business looking to scale, or a large company whose processes have become tangled, Grace Sigma can help. You can learn more at gracesigma.com.

Sarah Harrison  01:39
I have the honor today of introducing our book. It’s the newest gripping thriller from bestselling author Kathy Reichs. Forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan is called to Washington, DC, to investigate the remnants of a devastating fire, a job she expects will take her no more than a few days. Instead, the discovery of an unexpected body, one not killed by the blaze in the hidden sub-basement of the home, sends Tempe down a rabbit hole that gets deeper and twistier than she could have ever expected. Alongside a new ally, an intrepid telejournalist named Ivy Doyle, Tempe uncovers a link to the notorious Foggy Bottom Gang, bootleggers and racketeers from the 1930s and 40s whose descendants are still in the area today. It seems like an interesting if irrelevant connection until a second home with ties to the gang is burned down too, now fully swept up in not only the puzzle of the fires, but also her pursuit of justice for the mysterious body in the basement, Tempe finds herself in the crosshairs of a dangerous and volatile new enemy, delivering not only tightly woven plot full of forensic detail that fans have come to expect, but also a historical twist that uncovers the underbelly of one of America’s oldest cities. Fire and Bones is one of Kathy Reichs’ and Tempe’s most exhilarating adventures yet.

Carolyn Daughters  03:16
Today, we’re thrilled to welcome Kathy Reichs. Her first novel, Deja Dead, was published in 1997. It won the Ellis Award for Best First Novel and was an international bestseller. Fire and Bones is her 24^th novel featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. Kathy Reichs was also a producer of Fox television’s longest running scripted drama, Bones, which was based on her work and her novels. One of very few forensic anthropologists certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology, she divides her time between Charlotte, North Carolina, and Charleston, South Carolina. To learn more about Kathy Reichs, visit kathyreichs.com and follow her on Facebook at KathyReichsBooks and Instagram at KathyReichs.

Sarah Harrison  04:10
We’re so excited to have you.

Kathy Reichs  04:13
Well, thank you for inviting me.

Sarah Harrison  04:15
I love the display of books behind you. There are how many in the series. Twenty-four?

Kathy Reichs  04:21
This is number 24.

Carolyn Daughters  04:24
Number 24, which is Fire and Bones. We should hold that up.

Kathy Reichs  04:39
Love that.

Carolyn Daughters  04:41
What an enjoyable read. You don’t always have that experience when you’re 24 books into a series, and yet the character feels really alive. She’s energetic. At some points, she feels almost a little bit jaded with some things, and yet she can turn on a dime. And be so connected and heartfelt to particular elements of the case that you can see how it actually affects her relationships and the day to day life that she’s leading.

Kathy Reichs  05:12
Yes, it very much influences her state of mind, her outlook.

Sarah Harrison  05:20
One of the first things, so here’s what I did. And unfortunately, I was not familiar with the series, even though it’s amazing and it’s been on Netflix forever, so we’ve got to read this, the last book. And I went back and I read the pilot and original bio online. I just try to familiarize myself. You are basically the heroine. You are one of only a few forensic anthropologists. How closely is temperance you?

Kathy Reichs  05:55
Well, personally, she’s her own woman. She that’s all Tempe. We’re different people as far as personality and social relationships, and that kind of thing professionally is exactly what I do. As we see in Fire and Bones, she works at a lab in the medical examiner in North Carolina. She works for the equivalent agency in Quebec, for in Montreal, for the province of Quebec. She commutes between the two, which is what I did for decades. I remember when the first book came out, some reviewer said, Well, that’s impossible. Nobody would do that North Carolina to Montreal. And I said, Yeah, mirrors me very much in a professional capacity, but has her own. I wanted a character that was approachable and not perfect and had flaws, and obviously I couldn’t draw on myself for that, so I just made that up her, I don’t go into detail, but we know she’s had a colorful period in her past with alcohol, so she’s a non-drinker, so I think we share a sense of humor. She has very plastic, dry lighting, at times, sense of humor. And my friends, they’ve told me that when they’re reading the books and she says something smart ass that they say, I can just hear you say.

Sarah Harrison  07:18
That’s awesome. That was one of the things that showed up in the pilot episode. Tempe had just written this book, and her team of investigators were going back and forth about who was who in the book and how well did she write them. Did you draw those characters from life, or was that just a funny thing in the pilot?

Kathy Reichs  07:40
Around here in the lab, that happened to me, actually. When the first book came out, I was a little worried about what the reaction would be, especially the lab where I work. I drew on a lot of people in in Montreal, but I had a year cushion until it was translated into French, because most of them did not read in English, or speak English, so when they finally read it, I was a little nervous, because you could clearly see some of the people I’d drawn upon. But the only people that were the least bit irked were the people I didn’t include in the book. And then people would drop by my lab and say, so do you have any questions about DNA?

Carolyn Daughters  08:26
Yeah, because they’re maybe ready for the next book, and they’re like, if we engage enough, maybe I’ll be a star character in the next one. Yeah, exactly. I love that.

Sarah Harrison  08:37
That actually reminds me of our David Ignatius interview, where he was saying like one of his characters was in a movie represented so perfectly that now all of these operatives want to get into one of his books or movies so they can be famous like that.

Carolyn Daughters  08:55
There you go. Life changing. One thing that really resonated with Sarah and me, that got us thinking and talking amongst ourselves, is how engaged she is in her work to the point that she’s derailed. And we’re not going to spoil a thing in this, in this discussion, but very early in Fire and Bones, she’s derailed from these really fun plans she has, and she’s gonna take this well-deserved trip with the man she’s been seeing, and also her longtime partner in work as well. And one thing after the next, after the next, after the next. We were curious, from your perspective, Is she aware of how, how tunnel visioned she can be when a case is involved, and in particular, when she’s trying to determine the identity? Of a particular burned individual, how focused she gets to the point that other things fall by the wayside.

Kathy Reichs  10:10
I think she’s aware of it, and she is. She almost becomes compulsive. Particularly the story opens with a fire in a neighborhood called Foggy Bottom in Washington, DC, and I just love that name. I wanted Foggy Bottom phones or something in my publisher said, No, we’re not. Anyway, there’s a fire in a very old house in Foggy Bottom she’s asked to come. They knew there were four people in there. She’s asked to come recover and help identify the victims. But then one of the firemen falls through a sub-sub floor into a sub-sub seller. And of course, she has to go down there. Down there, they find the remains of, and it’s not on any of the, any of the plans for this old, old building. So that’s mysterious to begin with. And down there she finds this other body of a tiny little woman. She becomes, as you say, almost obsessed with figuring out who this tiny little woman is and what she’s doing down there. How’d she end up down there? How long has she been? Is she there six months, or is she there 100 years? She becomes very, very focused, almost to the exclusion of everything else. And she knows, she knows she’s driven in that way. But sure, that’s things we love about her is she’s really committed to, I’ve said it again and again, she works with the dead, that works for the living, and she’s really committed to giving answers to families and to getting to the truth.

Carolyn Daughters  11:43
The epigraph in Fire and Bones is an Albert Einstein quote, the right to search for truth implies also a duty. One must not conceal any part of what is one has recognized to be true. And that feels like her mantra, essentially.

Kathy Reichs  11:58
Yeah, even if you don’t like the truth. Even if the families don’t like what she’s they prefer to know the truth, yeah, than to be in the dark about what happened to their missing member.

Sarah Harrison  12:09
Well, you’re sending my brain off in a lot of different question directions, but the one closest to that, I’ll say, is so I’m a daughter of a minister, and it’s very common in what I would call the caring professions, for someone that is a professional career, they sometimes will put their professional duties above their personal family. How does Tempe balance that? And how do you balance that? As sort of a Tempe yourself, a forensic anthropologist who’s doing this work? How do you keep yourself together?

Kathy Reichs  12:47
I think I don’t. I can’t answer that. You either have the psychological makeup to do this kind of work, or you don’t. In some situations, such as working after 9/11 at the Twin Towers, we got a lot of support. We had preachers and priests and psychologists and people wandering through and looking deeply into your eyes and saying, are you okay? Are you good? You don’t have that on a day-to-day basis. You really just have to have the ability to do this kind of work. It’s not for everybody. I can’t give you a formula. When I leave the lab at night, I try to leave my casework there. I try not to bring it home with me. Some cases are harder than others. Child homicides are very hard, and those do stay with you even as you’re sleeping. I might think about those types of cases, but normally I don’t have a problem detaching myself from my work.

Sarah Harrison  13:53
I’m glad you said while you’re sleeping. I feel like Tempe’s dreams play a major role in Fire and Bones.

Kathy Reichs  14:01
She has some good ones, I think better ones than I do, but then I’m not as good at remembering them as she is. I don’t know if she remembers them so much as the narrator describes them for you, but she does have some very, very colorful dreams, and often she’ll get the great AHA that connects to that, and then that helps her move forward. I don’t know that that has happened to me very often.

Carolyn Daughters  14:28
And some of the dreams she has, she’ll wake up. And it’s not that she remembers that play by play, but it’s more that she comes away with a sense of foreboding, or a particular individual in the dream looms large, and she puts a spotlight on that person in a different way, or events that play out in Fire and Bones. One thing I noted Is she really does have a strong sense of people and place and events. She has. It’s part of its intuition. Part of it is a lifetime of experience at the work she’s doing. But she really seems tapped into me, which felt a little bit different than the way the character is portrayed in the TV show, where she seems maybe a little more socially separate from some of the characters. Does that make sense?

Kathy Reichs  15:22
Yeah, and especially in the early, early seasons of the show, 246 episodes, we’re still the longest running scripted drama in the history of Fox. If you watched all 246 episodes, you would see that Emily Deschanel did a fantastic job evolving that character. And while what you say much more so true in the early seasons, as the show progresses, I think she becomes a bit more polished, more sophisticated, as a goofy sense of humor, or lack of sense of humor. But those characteristics evolve. And you have the books, a TV show you have that stays on that long, you have to keep evolving characters, social situations in which they find them. If you just did Bones after Bones after Bones, people would very quickly tire of that.

Carolyn Daughters  16:20
People want three-dimensional characters who are interesting and change and surprise you at times.

Kathy Reichs  16:30
You write the books is similar to the way we write the screenplays for the shows is that you have your A story, which is your main story, the crime. You have a B story, which is something going on in the lives of the characters. And then you may also have a C story, which is something and then you also may have an arcing story that carries from episode to episode to episode, or even season to season. And that’s exactly the way I do it with the books as well.

Sarah Harrison  16:57
You really precipitated some of my questions there, since we’re reading late in the books, but we watched early in the season, it really came to my mind, like, how do these connect? What is the story arc here? And I noticed there’s a couple you referenced binging Bones in Fire and Bones. I thought that was really cute. And also Tempe references. She references being in a sack herself in the past, and I think that connected her to this victim.

Kathy Reichs  17:33
I had to go back and look that up. And I often have to go back and check my facts that came from an earlier story. Look, now, I’d have to think about which one, but I could remember the scene that I’d written that she was on a mountain side, or up in the mountains, and the bad guy had caught her and tied her up in a burlap sack and had gone off to prepare to throw her off the side mountain. And I think that’s that I did a lot of this in Cold, Cold Bones, hearkening back to earlier books. And I did that as a tribute to my return readers. I thought my return readers would get a kick out of recognizing easter eggs, dropping little Easter eggs in storyline. And it’s a clue to my first time readers, what the series is all about, what are some of the things that have happened to this character in the past? Be curious enough to say, oh, I want to go back and read about that.

Carolyn Daughters  18:34
I would think in your profession, and then in Tempe’s profession, there’s a lot of research involved. And that’s one of the things I liked most about Fire and Bones, is I’m learning about the Foggy Bottom Gang and Prohibition era in this 1911 house, and then even, just like the history of a burlap bag that comes into play in this story, I love the burlap bag. But, I mean, I think that that’s really fun. The guy’s like, Hey, if you’re ever in the mood to sell it, you give me a call. And I’m like, burlap bags. But I mean, so for you as a writer and also in your profession, I’m getting the sense that you love this sort of research and the learning aspect of a complex, rich case. Would you say that’s correct?

Kathy Reichs  19:31
I do like the rabbit hole yes, I do like the rabbit hole research, where you go to research. One thing you go to research, I don’t know, the different aspects of oil analysis, and you stumble across burlap bags and that there’s a whole world of people out there. We used to talk in the writers’ room, in the Bones writers’ room, about what worlds we were going to visit, or what arena we’re going to visit. So it’s fun to take the reader into the arena of people who collect historic burlap bags, for example.

Sarah Harrison  20:04
Right? Did you talk to one did you meet a burlap bag expert in doing this research?

Kathy Reichs  20:09
I actually made up that was mostly I talked to one guy. I did talk to one guy, but, yeah, I like doing the research. And you refer to the Foggy Bottom Gang. That’s really what kicked off Fire and Bones. A trio of brothers, the Waring brothers, back in Washington DC, were known as the Foggy Bottom gang. And when we think of illegal booze and prohibition, we think of Chicago and we think of Al Capone, but the Foggy Bottom gang filled the same niche in the Washington, DC, Virginia, Maryland area. So I thought, I’d never thought about that about bootlegging in Washington, DC. I thought it would be interesting to readers to learn about the Foggy Bottom gang. And I just like to say Foggy Bottom.

Carolyn Daughters  20:58
That’s fun, for sure.

Sarah Harrison  21:03
So much of the research is actually historic. And then, of course, you took liberties for the writing process in the book. Where did that diverge? What was some of the more interesting historic aspects of Fire and Bones? And then what did you throw in for readers there, and for the storyline.

Kathy Reichs  21:22
Oh, well, I’d have to go back and think about it, but all of the descriptions of Washington, DC, are accurate. I never write about a place I haven’t been, and I know Washington, DC, quite well. I went to American University as an undergraduate, so I spent time there, and then I lived there again in the early years of my marriage, when my husband was stationed at the Marine Corps legal headquarters in Washington, DC. So I’ve lived there, and I know the district well.

Sarah Harrison  21:59
Which parts were the most historic? And then where did you take liberties for the storyline? What did you throw in unhistorically?

Kathy Reichs  22:22
Anything I said about any monuments, or the layout of the district, or, I think I put a little bit in about the creation of the district and how it was divided into quadrants, etc. That’s all true. That’s all accurate. Where I take liberties is when I put fiction, when I create the story, and I write murder mysteries. I write good old-fashioned murder mysteries. The difference is the solution is driven by science, by in part, at least by forensic science. And that I keep accurate as well. But I take the elements of setting Washington, DC in this place, although the character really does get around in the different books. And the storyline that I want to touch on bringing in, and you’re right, this one has a little more history in it than most of my books, bringing in that colorful era of Prohibition and illegal booze, et cetera, and the Foggy Bottom Gang. And there has to be a modern crime that takes place also, and then posing the question to myself, Okay, these are the elements we’re going to work with. Well, what if this happens? What if this happens? What if this happens? And then you just spin it into fiction.

Carolyn Daughters  23:35
There’s so many different paths the story can go down where there are four people in a building right at the beginning. And we hear from the point of view of one of those four people right out of the gate. And so I’m thinking, oh, okay, something related to this woman is going to be the cause of the fire and the cause of the chaos that’s about to ensue. And then you find as the story complicates and becomes bigger and richer, like how far off I was as a reader in thinking Fire and Bones was going to go in that one direction. And so I thought that that was really just ingenious, the way that some of these setups at the start of the book have maybe limited or directionally challenging, figuring out which way the book is going to actually evolve, it becomes way more complicated than that. And I love that, because with each chapter, I’m diving into, I’m like, what’s the story right now and what’s happening?

Kathy Reichs  24:44
Yeah, at the outset, we learn about the victims of this fire, and each one has a backstory. It turns out each one could have been a target, if there even was a target, was it an intentionally fire? And if so, was there a target? And so why was that person? Targeted so we learn about each of those victims and each of their backstories, and that contributes to the what’s going on here, which the reader is supposed to experience. My job is to write a good mystery that the reader tries to figure at least. I think when I read a thriller, I try to figure it out as I go. I do figure it out before the end of the book. I’m a bit disappointed in the author, because the author’s job is to throw in those little red herrings and throw in those false moves. That’s do, as long as you tie them off and as long as they make sense, and as long as you don’t just rely on coincidence to make it all come together.

Sarah Harrison  25:42
One of the things that was really interesting to me, that I could not relate to is everyone answers their phone in the middle of the night. Is that realistic? Because I put mine on do not disturb. Is that not allowed?

Kathy Reichs  25:58
I don’t know if you have kids.

Sarah Harrison  26:01
I do, but they’re three and five, so they don’t have phones.

Kathy Reichs  26:05
Teenage kids who are out driving. You tend to leave your phone on at night in case they’ve got an accident or been arrested or whatever their latest caper happens to be. I think that’s where I got into the into the habit of leaving my phone on. Or, if you have elderly parents, or that kind of thing.

Sarah Harrison  26:24
It’s more about the kids than the job. Even though the job really took advantage of her, I felt like, Was it one of one of the folks she was working with Calder.

Carolyn Daughters  26:34
At four in the morning or something, just to see if she was still in DC.

Sarah Harrison  26:36
I was like, no, not fair.

Carolyn Daughters  26:40
Jada Thacker, I think, in Fire and Bones. And so over all the books, I’m curious as to your writing process. When you were starting the series, did you have a sense of multiple books? Did you have a sense of progression of character, certainly all these years later, like where she would be at this stage?

Kathy Reichs  27:05
I didn’t have much sense at all when I started the first book. I knew I was going to base the protagonist on myself, because it’s just easier to write about what you know. I sensed that forensic science was just beginning. People are beginning to show an interest in it. Prior to that, I started in the in the 90s writing. Prior to that, nobody really paid any attention to forensic science, but I just felt it was, it was time. So every now and then, I’d say to myself, Okay, this is going to be a series, and they’ll make a feature film. And then you say to yourself, come on, get real. Maybe you’ll get published. Maybe someone will actually read this and like this. That’s about as far ahead as I was looking, although I did intentionally create a character that I thought had potential for a series character.

Sarah Harrison  28:01
Now that’s really fascinating. I feel like I could just ask you a bunch of personal questions about being a forensic anthropologist, but talk to me maybe a little bit about how you got your education and physical anthropology, and then you’re one of just 100 certified in forensic anthropology. How does that transition work? How does the certification work between those fields?

Kathy Reichs  28:25
Yeah, physical anthropologists. Anthropology has four areas. There’s cultural anthropology, which is like Margaret Mead type stuff, and there’s linguistic studying languages. There’s archeology in the U.S. that’s within under the roof of anthropology. And then there is physical or biological anthropology, and within that sub specialty, you can focus on primates like Jane Goodall. Or you can focus on ancient human evolution, like the Leakeys, Mary and Louis Leakey. Or you can go into forensics, which is based on a knowledge of the skeleton, the human skeleton, and it’s applying knowledge of the human skeleton in working primarily for medical examiners and coroners. Could be the military, could be any number of different contexts. And the reason for board certification is because we testify in court. And if you testify in court, you have to know who’s qualified. When forensics became popular back in the 90s, all of a sudden, everybody started hanging out their shingle. If you had a degree in chemistry, forensic chemist, if you had a degree in psychology, I’m a forensic psychologist. You have a degree in anthropology, I’m a forensic anthropologist. So how do the courts, how does anyone, how does law enforcement, whoever’s hiring, who is a legitimate expert and who’s just a wannabe. And that’s why the process of board certification is important. You have to qualify as a candidate, and then you have to sit for a very, very rigorous examination. If you pass that, then you’re a diplomate of the American Board of forensic anthropology, and then you have to recertify, I think it’s every three years, something like that.

Carolyn Daughters  30:12
Now that you’ve finished Fire and Bones, have you started to map out your next book?

Kathy Reichs  30:16
It’ll be something like Evil Bones, or something with “Evil “in the title and obviously “Bones” in the title. And yes, I’m working on that. The manuscript is due in November. I usually turn them in by January, and that’s going to be a bit of a push. I’m a full time writer now. I am not teaching university anymore, and I pretty much from forensic casework. I’m available if they really need me for some if there’s a mass disaster or something, but I’m pretty much focusing on the writing now.

Carolyn Daughters  31:04
Do you find that, as with Tempe Brennan in Fire and Bones, that people do call you out of the blue, and they’re like, Okay, we need you. You have to come to this particular site.

Kathy Reichs  31:15
There aren’t that many of us, as you pointed out early in in the broadcast. I would have to go to the American Board of Forensic Anthropology website and look up the number of board certified forensic anthropologists, because if you want to be a real player, you do have to be board certified. And if you have, if you want to testify in court, to be qualified, you need to be board certified. So there aren’t that many of us, and we all know each other. So we divide up the work, or it naturally divides itself geographically. There’s one in Wyoming, and there’s one in LA there’s one in and the work goes locally to most of it, not all of it, not always. And I will occasionally get a call from someone in perhaps an area where they don’t have a forensic anthropologist, someone in rural Nebraska or something, and then I refer it to whatever colleague of mine is geographically the most sensible in that area that makes sense.

Sarah Harrison  32:22
Kathy, this half-hour has flown by.

Carolyn Daughters  32:29
We’re so excited to have had the chance to talk with you today about your latest novel, Fire and Bones.

Kathy Reichs  32:33
Thank you for your thoughtful questions.

Sarah Harrison 
We hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, it would mean the world to us if you would subscribe and then you’ll never miss an episode. Be sure to leave us a rating or review on Apple podcasts Spotify, or wherever you listen to Tea, Tonic & Toxin. That way, likeminded folks can also find us on all platforms.

Carolyn Daughters
You can learn more about all our book selections at teatonicandtoxin.com. You can also comment, weigh in, and follow along with what we’re reading and discussing @teatonicandtoxin on Instagram and Facebook. And you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Finally, please visit our website, teatonicandtoxin.com to check out current and past reading lists and support our labor of love, starting at only $3 a month.

Sarah Harrison
We want to thank you for joining us on our journey through the history of mystery. We absolutely adore you. Until next time, stay mysterious.